RIM rolls out Playbook 2.0

Disenchanted Canadian company Research in Motion has seen better days. They have lost their crown as king of the smart phones in North America (sales in China and India are another story), suffered PR problems after infrastructure outages and have had the Playbook, their flagship tablet, completely decimated by competition.

Mashable reports that they have now released a firmware update to that device, saying:

The new version of the OS brings social integration with services such as Facebook and Twitter, speedier operation with the help of real-time multitasking and several new/improved productivity tools including Print to Go and Documents To Go, which lets you view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

The update also brings a native email application, something RIM was heavily chided for leaving out of the original release. Unfortunately, this is mostly a non-news item.

RIM has done too little far too late. Rumors of a Blackberry Playbook firesale continue to circulate, and Best Buy slashed prices a month ago to get rid of their surplus. Nobody wants a playbook. Most people don’t know they exist. This is due to a catastrophic failure on RIM’s behalf.

The Playbook is actually a sleek device. It could have been a serious competitor to the ipad. Could have been, if they had adapted to the times and focused on everyday consumers instead of their staple business demographic. RIM remains focused on catering to executives, and therefore have lost ground in the app developing battle. People don’t develop Blackberry apps because they have made it so difficult (ironically, their biggest strength remains their closed, proprietary network- which has now crippled them in app development).

I believe the 8 inch tablet is the way of the future, as opposed to larger ipad model. RIM’s internal structure has botched everything about their company (the phone end, the tablet end, the development end and the PR end) that there is no way to return, despite the new OS.

I do look forward to the day, though, in which I can pick up a Playbook (once they’re $150), slap android on it, and have a functional tablet without worrying about their service again.